New Alberta premier says unvaccinated ‘most discriminated against group’ after swearing-in
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Alberta’s new premier says outgoing Premier Jason Kenney hasn’t responded to her invitation for a meeting.
“I think the premier needs a little bit of time,” newly minted Premier Danielle Smith said at her first press conference after being sworn in Tuesday morning.
In a tweet last week, Kenney congratulated Smith for defeating six competitors to win the UCP leadership race, and said there would be an “orderly transition” as she takes the helm of government.
“I think it was pretty clear he had a preferred candidate in this race, and it wasn’t me,” Smith said.
Smith also said Albertans should expect rapid changes to who is managing health care in the province.
She will replace Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, and recruit a new team of advisers in public health that consider COVID-19 to be an endemic disease.
AHS leadership review
She also repeated a pledge to review the leadership of Alberta Health Services (AHS) by the end of 2022.
“I want our front-line health care workers to know that reinforcements are coming,” Smith said. “We cannot continue understaffing our hospitals and then forcing our front-line workers to work mandatory overtime and be called in on days off and have to cancel their holidays.”
As the world grapples with a shortage of health-care workers and professionals burn out, Smith says Alberta won’t have any vaccination mandates, which will help attract employees to the province.
Last year, when the Alberta government ordered AHS to require its 121,000 employees to be vaccinated for COVID-19, about 1,650 workers were put on unpaid leave for refusing the jab. The province has since rescinded that rule.
Smith has been deeply critical of the Kenney government’s use of public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has pledged to amend the Alberta Human Rights Act to add vaccination status as a grounds subject to protection from discrimination.
“They have been the most discriminated against group that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime,” Smith said of unvaccinated Canadians at the press conference.
Vaccination politics
Chaldeans Mensah, a political science professor at Edmonton’s MacEwan University, said making dramatic changes to the top of the health system could cause unexpected consequences throughout the organization.
He said it’s also problematic to bring the politics of vaccination into the recruitment of health-care workers.
“You typically are recruiting people with the experience and the qualifications to do the job,” he said.
Mensah said Kenney’s silent treatment of Smith shows the party has internal rifts to heal.
“Obviously this is a big problem for the UCP,” he said. “They need to be united ahead of the next election.”
Smith has also called a Nov. 8 byelection in the southern Alberta riding of Brooks-Medicine Hat, where she will seek a seat in the legislature.
Should she win that byelection, Smith hopes to be sworn in as an MLA by Nov. 29, at which time the legislature would begin a four-week fall sitting.
Alberta sovereignty
Earlier Tuesday at a swearing-in ceremony for her premiership, Smith said she will use her role to defend citizens’ rights and freedoms while governing with compassion for the vulnerable.
A hallmark of Smith’s campaign to become UCP leader and premier was a pledge to bring forward an Alberta Sovereignty Act, which she says would allow the legislature to pass a motion pledging to disregard federal laws counter to Alberta’s best interests.
An adviser on her campaign told CBC News this weekend that the proposed act won’t empower Alberta to disregard Supreme Court rulings.
But in a Sept. 6 briefing document on the act, Smith said that if a court deems Alberta’s actions unconstitutional, the legislature would have to decide how to proceed.
Reporters pressed Smith on Tuesday afternoon about whether the act would adhere to the rule of law. Although she did not directly answer the question, Smith said her job is to find creative ways to ensure the federal government doesn’t encroach on provincial jurisdiction, and not all of those approaches will depend on a sovereignty act.
She said she intends to support Supreme Court of Canada decisions. She also reiterated her hope that changing global conditions and new information would allow Alberta to re-litigate the Supreme Court’s 2021 finding that the federal consumer carbon tax is constitutional.
Some UCP MLAs have said they could not vote in favour of a sovereignty act as described.
Also Tuesday in Calgary, Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley called on those MLAs to vote against the act in the legislature and defeat it.
“There’s no good version of this,” Notley said. “If [Smith and her supporters] don’t believe that they’re going to do what they said they were going to do up until the leadership vote, then they should just walk away from the whole thing altogether.”
At her swearing in, Smith called on other provinces and territories to stand with Alberta to develop its energy resources and agriculture sector.
She echoed the message from her campaign and her leadership acceptance speech that responsible governing must also include care for those who are struggling, particularly in the face of inflation.
“We are Albertans,” she said. “Yes, we are entrepreneurs and businesspeople and fiscally prudent. But we also have heart and compassion that matches the size of our mountains.”
Smith defeated six other candidates to become leader of the United Conservative Party last week, garnering about 54 per cent of the vote on the sixth ballot.
The party had been on the hunt for a new leader after UCP members voted 51.4 per cent in favour of Kenney’s continued leadership, prompting him to announce his resignation.